Debian SPARC Port

Overview

These pages are meant to assist users and Debian developers running
Debian GNU/Linux on the SPARC architecture. In these pages, you will
find information about the current status, currently known problems,
information for and about Debian porters, and pointers to more
information.

Current Status

Debian SPARC is officially released and known to be stable. Supported
are sun4u and sun4v machines (with a 32-bit userland). See
the Install Manual
for information on supported systems, hardware, and how to install
Debian.

About 64-bit SPARC support

The Debian SPARC port,
as mentioned above, does support the sun4u (Ultra)
and sun4v (Niagara CPU) architectures.
It uses a 64-bit kernel (compiled with gcc 3.3 or newer), but most of the
applications run in 32-bit. This is also called a 32-bit
userland.

The Debian SPARC 64 (a.k.a., UltraLinux) porting effort is not
currently conceived as a full porting effort like other ports.
Rather, it is intended to be an add-on to the SPARC Port.

In fact, there is really no point in having all applications running
in 64-bit mode. Full 64-bit mode involves a significant overhead
(memory and disk size) with often no benefit. Some applications
really can benefit from being in 64-bit mode, and that is the purpose
of this porting effort.

Compiling kernels for sun4u

To compile a Linux kernel for Sun4u, you'll need to use the Linux 2.2
or newer source tree.

We highly suggest you also use the kernel-package package to
help with the installation and management of kernels. You can compile
a configured kernel in one command (as root):

Kernel questions should be addressed to the list
<sparclinux@vger.rutgers.edu>. Subscribe by sending a message
with body subscribe sparclinux to the address majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu.
There is also a Red Hat list, of course.

This is a very small list of Linux SPARC (a.k.a. S/Linux) links:

UltraLinux -- the
definitive source for the kernel port. Don't be deceived by the name;
it covers mostly plain SPARC rather than UltraSPARC.